WooCommerce is an open-source e-commerce platform designed to provide merchants with the tools they need to sell products online effectively. Integrating Beans with WooCommerce enhances this experience by enabling merchants to boost customer loyalty through a rewards system. With Beans for WooCommerce, you can reward customers for their purchases, encouraging repeat business and fostering a loyal customer base.

Setup

To begin, install the Beans plugin for WooCommerce from the WordPress plugin repository. Follow the WordPress guideline for plugin installation. After installation, activate the plugin and connect Beans to your shop using the setup instructions.

To manually connect Beans to your WooCommerce store, follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to the plugins management page in your WordPress admin.
  2. Find Beans and select settings.
  3. On the Beans admin page within WordPress, follow the prompts and click Connect.
  4. Select your Beans account or create a new one. If you already have one, log in.
  5. Once on the connect page, choose Connect manually.
  6. Provide WooCommerce API keys as instructed.
  7. In WordPress admin, go to WooCommerce > Settings > Advanced > REST API.
  8. Select Add key to create a new key for Beans.
  9. Fill out the form: name the key, choose the primary admin as the user, and set permissions to Read/Write.
  10. Generate and copy the API Key.
  11. Paste the keys into the Beans interface form field.
  12. Click Connect to complete the process.

Rewards page

The Beans plugin for WooCommerce automatically adds a rewards page to your shop. By default, you can access the page at https://myshop.com/rewards-program, assuming your website’s full URL is https://myshop.com.

To display the rewards program page, Beans uses the shortcode [beans_page]. This makes it very easy to edit the page if necessary.

It is recommended to add the link to your rewards program in the main menu to make it easy for your customers to access. Here is how to do it: How to Add Navigation Menu in WordPress

Redemption

Minimum points required for redemption

Sets a minimum points threshold that customers must reach before redeeming rewards. By default, customers need to accumulate at least 100 points before being eligible for redemption. You can adjust this threshold higher to ensure meaningful program engagement and prevent inefficient redemptions. For example, if you set the minimum to 500 points, customers would need to earn at least 500 points before they can start redeeming rewards.

How it works:

  1. From the WooCommerce integration dashboard, navigate to Preferences.
  2. Locate the Redemption section and enter your desired minimum points threshold in the Minimum Points Required field.
  3. Click Save to apply changes.

Choose a minimum threshold that balances customer satisfaction with your business goals. Too high may discourage participation, while too low could reduce program effectiveness.

Maximum discount per redemption

Sets a limit on how much of the total purchase price can be discounted through points. This ensures that the discounts provided through redemptions remain within acceptable limits for your business. For example, if a customer wants to buy a product priced at $10 and has 1000 points (equal to $10), but the maximum discount is set to 50%, they can only use 500 points, giving them a $5 discount.

How it works:

  1. From the WooCommerce integration dashboard, navigate to Preferences.
  2. Locate the Redemption section and use the Maximum Discount Per Redemption slider to set your desired maximum discount percentage.
  3. Click Save to apply changes.

Setting a reasonable maximum discount percentage helps maintain a balance between rewarding customers and protecting your profit margins.

Eligible collections

Enable point redemption for specific product collections in your store. Customers can then redeem points only for products in the selected collections. When no collections are selected, all products are eligible for redemption.

How it works:

  1. From the WooCommerce integrations home page, navigate to Preferences.
  2. Locate the Eligible Collections section and click on Select collections.
  3. Choose the collections you want to make eligible for point redemption.
  4. Click Save to confirm.

Auto registration

Automatically enrolls new customers into your rewards program when they create an account or make a purchase. This ensures seamless participation and maximum program engagement.

How it works:

  1. From the WooCommerce integration dashboard, navigate to Preferences.
  2. Locate the Advance section and switch the Auto registration toggle to On.
  3. Click Save to confirm.

Reinstall

If you suspect the Beans plugin isn’t properly installed on your WordPress site, Beans provides a straightforward solution to address this without any negative side effects.

  1. From the Beans admin dashboard, navigate to the WooCommerce integration home page.
  2. Select Status in the integration navigation menu.
  3. From the Actions dropdown on the top right, select Reinstall Beans.

Troubleshooting

Issues with connecting Beans

Beans uses the WooCommerce API to access your store data. Here are the most common reasons why you might experience issues with connecting Beans to your store.

  • Password-protected store: To connect Beans to your store, you might need to temporarily disable password protection for your store.
  • “coming soon” or “site under construction” plugin that restricts public access: This will block API access, which is essential for our application. To resolve this, temporarily disable the plugin to allow connection, then reactivate it afterward.
  • Incorrect API keys: Please double-check your API keys to ensure they are correct.
  • Invalid SSL certificate: Beans use SSL to securely connect to your store. If your SSL certificate is invalid, you might need to renew it.
  • Cache plugin: If you have a cache management plugin that strips the “Authorization” header, try disabling the plugin to see if it resolves the issue.
  • Incorrect permalinks: Ensure that your WordPress permalinks are set to a pretty permalink structure. The recommended setting is /%postname%/.
  • Outdated WordPress or WooCommerce version: Update your WordPress and WooCommerce to the latest versions.
  • Localhost: If you’re using localhost, you need to install Beans on a live server or use a localtunnel URL such as ngrok to connect to your store.
  • Invalid WordPress site location: WordPress must be installed at the root level of your domain or subdomain. For example, if you’re developing a store at www.example.com/dev/, our server will attempt to connect to www.example.com. To avoid this issue, install the development store on a subdomain like the dev.example.com